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agny wrote:Edit to add: I know little about production but I like most of the sound, can hear individual voices and instruments even in the layers and there is breathing space and white space if you know what I mean. Just looked up the list of albums Nick Raskulinecz has worked on, I loved and said the same thing about Big Wreck's Albatross

Breathing space ?
The album scores a DR 5 on the dynamic range website (1 being brickwalled, 20 being dynamic).
http://www.dr.loudness-war.info/details.php?id=39579

This is just as bad as every rock album out there. For instance :
ODR scored a DR 5
Blackbird scored a DR 5
ABIII scored a DR 6
Full Circle scored a DR 5
Black Gives Way to Blue scored a DR 6.

ABIII was less brickwalled than ODR...?

I've probably listened to this album a fair bit now, probably over 8 listens, and I think it's really good. Lab Monkey, Low Ceiling, Hollow, Stone, Breath on a Window, Phantom Limb, Hung on a Hook and Choke are all brilliant, but I think everything else is filler and I'll probably skip them later on. My main criticism is that William doesn't sing enough, Jerry's voice is alright, but it's not brilliant, it's actually quite boring at times. I'm sure William could do a much better job than Jerry on pretty much all the songs on this album. I've never listened to an Alice in Chains song and thought "Layne/William sing it well, but I wish Jerry sang this song instead!"

The production does make this album a little difficult to listen to, which is a shame. I was surprised when I found out ODR is more brickwalled than ABIII, but I still think ABIII is their worst sounding album. With ODR there's much less going on, the instrumentation is more simple, so although it's compressed to a greater extent than ABIII, it seems like a better produced album, as there's a lot less to compress, whereas ABIII has more layers with the extra guitar, the vocal echos and all that crap, so it's although it's compressed less, there's more music to compress.

I didn't like Hollow when it first came out, but I think it's my favorite song in the album now.

BSC wrote:I've probably listened to this album a fair bit now, probably over 8 listens, and I think it's really good. Lab Monkey, Low Ceiling, Hollow, Stone, Breath on a Window, Phantom Limb, Hung on a Hook and Choke are all brilliant, but I think everything else is filler and I'll probably skip them later on. My main criticism is that William doesn't sing enough, Jerry's voice is alright, but it's not brilliant, it's actually quite boring at times. I'm sure William could do a much better job than Jerry on pretty much all the songs on this album. I've never listened to an Alice in Chains song and thought "Layne/William sing it well, but I wish Jerry sang this song instead!"

The production does make this album a little difficult to listen to, which is a shame. I was surprised when I found out ODR is more brickwalled than ABIII, but I still think ABIII is their worst sounding album. With ODR there's much less going on, the instrumentation is more simple, so although it's compressed to a greater extent than ABIII, it seems like a better produced album, as there's a lot less to compress, whereas ABIII has more layers with the extra guitar, the vocal echos and all that crap, so it's although it's compressed less, there's more music to compress.

You can't really explain the full intricacy of an album's sound based on a dynamic range number. It's just a measure of the loudest moments verses the quietest moment.

chtimixeur wrote:

agny wrote:Edit to add: I know little about production but I like most of the sound, can hear individual voices and instruments even in the layers and there is breathing space and white space if you know what I mean. Just looked up the list of albums Nick Raskulinecz has worked on, I loved and said the same thing about Big Wreck's Albatross

Breathing space ?
The album scores a DR 5 on the dynamic range website (1 being brickwalled, 20 being dynamic).
http://www.dr.loudness-war.info/details.php?id=39579

This is just as bad as every rock album out there. For instance :
ODR scored a DR 5
Blackbird scored a DR 5
ABIII scored a DR 6
Full Circle scored a DR 5
Black Gives Way to Blue scored a DR 6.

Well, I don't think I was just looking at one metric, I was expressing an overall opinion about how it sounds to me. I'm hearing the result of Jerry's songwriting and the production and I guess I'm thankful the production, recording, mixing, mastering, and whatnot doesn't muddy the music too much and it sounds great to me personally. Gotta love the irony of complaining about data compression by reducing entire albums of music to whole numbers.

All I'm saying is if the album had a DR 11 or a DR 13, it would sound much much better.
Rock doesn't need to be loud to sound good, and that's one mistake 99,9% bands keep repeating over and over again.

Crazy crowd at Rock Am Range for chains.

[youtube]http://youtu.be/8Ib6UwxgYAM[/youtube]

Think this was the first time they did Phantom Limb live. If I remember correctly William wrote this one? One of my favorites off the album. Get that and Voices stuck in my head a lot.
[youtube]http://youtu.be/joDh3jeTfQU[/youtube]

Just found out Alice In Chains are playing Newport in November, which is like a 30 minute drive from me! It looks like I'll be seeing Alice In Chains then!

Awesome! Saw them in May, and they were amazing. Soundgarden played after them, and AIC put on a slightly better show imo.

BSC wrote:Just found out Alice In Chains are playing Newport in November, which is like a 30 minute drive from me! It looks like I'll be seeing Alice In Chains then!

yay! They're fantastic live, still thrilled with seeing them almost 2 months ago and hoping to see 'em again soon.

I think upthread some people commented about William being low in the mix on the albums, and I agree with that. He's much more prominent live, and a really fun frontman.

Backstage with Baldy blog post, about online comments about the band reformation. True of a lot of fan speculation about what goes on in bands.
http://aliceinchains.umg-wp-stage.com/b ... -july-8th/

Saw Alice In Chains last night. They blew me away, I was expecting it to be good, but not that good! The setlist was great, opening with Dirt was incredible. Grind was a highlight and closing the main set with Sludge Factory was awesome. Nutshell and Down In a Hole were show stoppers.

I had a lot of respect for William Duvall before, but my respect for him has sky rocketed. He's filled massive shoes, but he's so confident live, loads of energy. To say he nailed it vocally is an understatement. He sings the lyrics with such conviction that it's almost as if he wrote them and experienced what the guys all experienced back in the day. He added a few guitar licks in Got Me Wrong, and I didn't realise he played the solo in Phantom Limb! It's a shame really, a lot of people say Layne Staley is one of their favourite singers, for completely right reasons, but William does what Layne did and more (with no disrespect to Layne), yet he doesn't get no where near as much recognition.

Awesome, agree with all you said. I love that they play stuff from their whole catalog, and I love Duvall. He loves it so much when the crowd sings along and interacts with people in the crowd. He also comes across as very intelligent in his interviews and even on Twitter.
http://drownedinsound.com/in_depth/4147 ... -in-chains

BSC wrote:Saw Alice In Chains last night. They blew me away, I was expecting it to be good, but not that good! The setlist was great, opening with Dirt was incredible. Grind was a highlight and closing the main set with Sludge Factory was awesome. Nutshell and Down In a Hole were show stoppers.

I had a lot of respect for William Duvall before, but my respect for him has sky rocketed. He's filled massive shoes, but he's so confident live, loads of energy. To say he nailed it vocally is an understatement. He sings the lyrics with such conviction that it's almost as if he wrote them and experienced what the guys all experienced back in the day. He added a few guitar licks in Got Me Wrong, and I didn't realise he played the solo in Phantom Limb! It's a shame really, a lot of people say Layne Staley is one of their favourite singers, for completely right reasons, but William does what Layne did and more (with no disrespect to Layne), yet he doesn't get no where near as much recognition.

Damn, that's an awesome setlist.

I totally agree with you. I think DuVall is one of the most underrated frontmen today.

BSC wrote:Saw Alice In Chains last night. They blew me away, I was expecting it to be good, but not that good! The setlist was great, opening with Dirt was incredible. Grind was a highlight and closing the main set with Sludge Factory was awesome. Nutshell and Down In a Hole were show stoppers.

I had a lot of respect for William Duvall before, but my respect for him has sky rocketed. He's filled massive shoes, but he's so confident live, loads of energy. To say he nailed it vocally is an understatement. He sings the lyrics with such conviction that it's almost as if he wrote them and experienced what the guys all experienced back in the day. He added a few guitar licks in Got Me Wrong, and I didn't realise he played the solo in Phantom Limb! It's a shame really, a lot of people say Layne Staley is one of their favourite singers, for completely right reasons, but William does what Layne did and more (with no disrespect to Layne), yet he doesn't get no where near as much recognition.

Awesome man... Did they play Rotten Apple? If theres one band I want to see live before curtains fall, its AIC. Damn they don't show up in India. If any of you ever come across these guys, please oh please tell em they have fans waiting to listen to em live down here.

Them Bones wrote:

BSC wrote:Saw Alice In Chains last night. They blew me away, I was expecting it to be good, but not that good! The setlist was great, opening with Dirt was incredible. Grind was a highlight and closing the main set with Sludge Factory was awesome. Nutshell and Down In a Hole were show stoppers.

I had a lot of respect for William Duvall before, but my respect for him has sky rocketed. He's filled massive shoes, but he's so confident live, loads of energy. To say he nailed it vocally is an understatement. He sings the lyrics with such conviction that it's almost as if he wrote them and experienced what the guys all experienced back in the day. He added a few guitar licks in Got Me Wrong, and I didn't realise he played the solo in Phantom Limb! It's a shame really, a lot of people say Layne Staley is one of their favourite singers, for completely right reasons, but William does what Layne did and more (with no disrespect to Layne), yet he doesn't get no where near as much recognition.

Awesome man... Did they play Rotten Apple? If theres one band I want to see live before curtains fall, its AIC. Damn they don't show up in India. If any of you ever come across these guys, please oh please tell em they have fans waiting to listen to em live down here.

At least you guys get some good bands touring there. Pakistan gets nothing!

It is rather exciting that AiC are on the Soundwave 2014 tour in Australia.

I will definitely make sure I don't miss them as I've not seen them yet. I really like "The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here" (the album... the title track is OK but it's not my favorite track), songs like Stone and Phantom Limb are great.

I think I prefer this album over Black Gives Way to Blue, though both with DuVall have been great. I think my favourite Staley album though was Facelift. Dirt was great but I liked Facelift just a smidge more.

Violent Corpse wrote:

Them Bones wrote:

BSC wrote:Saw Alice In Chains last night. They blew me away, I was expecting it to be good, but not that good! The setlist was great, opening with Dirt was incredible. Grind was a highlight and closing the main set with Sludge Factory was awesome. Nutshell and Down In a Hole were show stoppers.

I had a lot of respect for William Duvall before, but my respect for him has sky rocketed. He's filled massive shoes, but he's so confident live, loads of energy. To say he nailed it vocally is an understatement. He sings the lyrics with such conviction that it's almost as if he wrote them and experienced what the guys all experienced back in the day. He added a few guitar licks in Got Me Wrong, and I didn't realise he played the solo in Phantom Limb! It's a shame really, a lot of people say Layne Staley is one of their favourite singers, for completely right reasons, but William does what Layne did and more (with no disrespect to Layne), yet he doesn't get no where near as much recognition.

Awesome man... Did they play Rotten Apple? If theres one band I want to see live before curtains fall, its AIC. Damn they don't show up in India. If any of you ever come across these guys, please oh please tell em they have fans waiting to listen to em live down here.

At least you guys get some good bands touring there. Pakistan gets nothing!

Man, honestly, its been a while since we got anything decent. The last big gig was Metallica, and its kinda saturated with the numerous not so great metal bands showing up. We need bands like Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, Chains Tool etc to show up. By the way, Call used to be decent, what went wrong with Junaid? Man they had some cool tunes.